Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

6Direct Object Clitic Doubling in Albanian and GreekDalina Kallulli1. IntroductionA pervasive phenomenon in the languages of the Balkan is that of clitic doubling.This study investigates clitic doubling of direct objects in two of theselanguages: Albanian and Greek (MGrk). This undertaking is motivated by theneed to gain deeper insight into the nature of clitic doubling constructions and inturn contributes to the general question of why clitic doubling appears at all.Doubling constructions are by their nature strongly reminiscent of object agreementconstructions. Yet, there are essential differences between the two that begfor explanation. The Albanian and Greek patterns confirm the idea that in spiteof certain similarities between clitic doubling and object agreement phenomena,the two cannot be equated. For instance, unlike object agreement markers, directobject clitics in Albanian and Greek have restricted distribution and operatorlikeproperties. It will be shown that the factors that determine clitic doubling ofdirect object DPs in both languages are by and large identical and can becaptured by a uniform syntactic analysis. Crucially, I argue that direct objectclitics in both languages unequivocally mark the DPs they double as [-Focus],which, in analogy with the [+Focus] feature on phrases (cf. Jackendoff 1972,Horvath 1986, Rochernont 1986, Brody 1990, among others), will be defined asa syntactic feature on phrases interpretable at both the LF and PF interfaces.Consequently, clitic doubling of direct object DPs does not induce specificity onthese DPs, as has been claimed for Romance (cf. Sportiche 1992, Uriagareka(1995. among others). It will be argued instead that the locus of specificity is theD position (cf. Abney 1987), which for noun phrases underlies argumenthood(cf. Longobardi 1994). The view that direct object clitics in Albanian and Greekmark the DPs they double as unambiguously [-Focus] may be implementedsuccessfully within the minimalist framework (cf. Chomsky 1995) by preservingSportiche's (1992) basic assumption that clitics head their own maximalprojections and that direct object clitics in particular are heads with operatorlikeproperties. Importantly, it will be argued that argument clitics carry a D-featurc,which is why they may double only DPs, not NPs, and that specificity,127